A seven-hour train ride for one passenger in the San Francisco Bay Area last week ended with him on the train — and dead.
Passengers aboard a train headed toward San Jose did not notice that a man died during the trip, and he was only discovered several hours later at the end of the line on Friday, authorities with Bay Area Rapid Transit agency said.
The unidentified man boarded a BART train at Bay Fair Station in San Leandro at 6:48 p.m. Thursday, according to BART spokesperson James Allison. The man continued to move about the train up until 8:22 p.m. and then he moved out of view from a surveillance camera, Allison said.
Other passengers moved about the train and past the area where the man was last seen on camera but did not seem to react to anything unusual, Allison said. The man was found at 2:20 a.m. at the end of the train line during the routine check by BART car cleaners and police before the train cars are taken out of service.
A cleaner found the man in "apparent medical distress" and reported it to a police officer at the Berryessa/North San Jose BART Station. The man was unresponsive and had no pulse, according to authorities.
"There was drug paraphernalia in his possession, and there were no signs of foul play," Allison said.
Police began to give him medical aid and administered a dose of naloxone, a medication that can block the effects of opioids. Emergency personnel arrived on the scene, took over and reported his death at 2:55 a.m. BART police have classified the incident as an unattended death.
The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the man's identity.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that three people died from fatal drug overdoses while aboard BART trains or at a station over a one-week period in September.
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